Category: Africa

Help at last for the Addis Ababa zoo

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:

ADDIS ABABA–That little was done for more than 30 years to
improve the Haile Selassie Zoo in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, might be
no surprise, in view of the usually dilapidated state of African
zoos–but the zoo holds a well-documented population of the rarest of
all lion subspecies, believed to be the oldest captive lion colony
in existence.
The black-maned Atlas lion, Barbary lion, or Lion of Judah,
hauled to Imperial Rome by the thousands for use and slaughter in
Colossium spectacles, was extirpated from Libya by 1700, from Egypt
by 1800, from Tunisia in 1891, from Algeria in 1912, and from
Morocco in 1921. This was a year after the lion was deleted from the
World Encyclopedia of Animals as already extinct.

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Namibian seal hunt

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

The 2006 Namibian sealing season opened on July 1, with a
quota of 85,000 pups, 20,000 more than in 2005, and 7,000 bulls.
Adult females are exempted, to keep the seal breeding population up.
Just a fraction of the size of the annual Atlantic Canadian
seal hunt, the Namibian hunt has attracted little public attention
and protest–and even less since South Africa ended sealing in 1990.
As Namibia and South Africa share the same seal population, a common
misperception was that all sealing had ended along the Atlantic coast
of Africa. In fact, the Namibian sealing quota was doubled to
60,000 after 2000, when according to the Namibian government as many
as 300,000 seals starved due to depleted fisheries. Overfishing and
climatic change due to global warming appeared to be the major causes
of the seal deaths, but Namibia claimed the seals had overpopulated
their habitat. Current reports indicate, however, that the
Namibian seal population has never recovered to more than 75% of the
size it was in 1993, the recent recorded peak year.

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Tuli elephant case reprised

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

Eight years after video of the capture and holding conditions
endured by 30 baby elephants became the globally notorious “Tuli
elephants” case, a similar incident occurred in April 2006 at the
Selati Game Reserve in Limpopo state, South Africa, Michele Pickover
of Xwe African Wild Life told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
“Six young elephants were cruelly separated from their
families for use by the elephant-back safari industry,” Pickover
wrote. “Helicopters, guns, and electric prods were used. The young
elephants went to Howard Blight’s Elephants for Africa Forever in
Mooketsi, near Duiwelskloof.
“On the EFAF website, Blight claims that, ‘Animal welfare
is the most critical issue,'” Pickover noted, “but this kind of
capture has nothing to do with animal welfare and certainly shows no
respect for elephant family structures.”

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Rabies strikes Namibian kudu

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

WINDHOEK–Veterin-arians Otto Zapke and
Beate Voights in mid-May 2006 reportedly
confirmed that a rare outbreak of rabies
spreading from herbivore to herbivore during the
past two years was responsible for the deaths of
“thousands” of kudu in the Omaruru region of
Namibia.
“Sources in the industry have voiced
concern that the outbreak could impact negatively
on the hunting season,” reported Chrispin
Inambao of the Windhoek New Era. “People come to
Namibia because of kudus,” Inambao said a
hunting industry source told him. About 5,000
hunters per year visit Namibia.

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Zimbabwe running out of “trophies”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

HARARE–The Zimbabwe Parks & Wildlife Management Authority in
April 2006 suspended hunting in game conservancies, just three
months after nationalizing the hunting industry amid reports that
profiteering Robert Mugabe regime insiders were allowing visiting
hunters to annihilate the “trophy” animal population of the country.
“We want the animals to be more mature before hunting can
resume,” said parks public relations manager Edward Mbewe. “We want
to improve the trophy quality.”
All lion hunting was suspended in Matabeleland North.
“Villagers should report any stray lions instead of killing the
animals,” Mbewe said. “Lions are favoured by hunters and thus
generate a lot of foreign currency.”
Mbewe acknowledged that tourists had complained about seeing few
animals in drought-stricken Hwange National Park.

South Africa moves on canned hunts–can rules be enforced?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

PRETORIA–Six weeks of public comment on
government proposals to reform the South African
trophy hunting industry are expected to end in
mid-June 2006 with the recommended reforms on the
fast track to adoption–almost 10 years after the
British TV expose series “The Cooke Report”
brought to light the abuses that the proposals
address.
Introducing the proposed “National Norms
and Standards for the Regulation of the Hunting
Industry” and accompanying “Threatened and
Protected Species” on May 1 at the De Wildt
Cheetah & Wildlife Centre, west of Pretoria,
Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van
Schalkwyk predicted that they might be in effect
before the end of the year.

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“Sylvester & Tweety” go global

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

Robben Island Museum, responsible for managing Robben
Island, South Africa, is again trying to eradicate feral cats.
Sharpshooters killed cats on the island in 1999 and 2005, when 58
cats were shot, but as many as 70 cats remain, environmental
coordinator Shaun Davis recently told Cape Argus reporter John Yeld.
The shooting was suspended for a time to allow animal advocacy groups
including Beauty Without Cruelty/South Africa to trap the surviving
cats and take them to mainland sanctuaries. BWC/ South Africa
spokesperson Beryl Scott told Yeld that the initial effort was “not
that successful,” partly through lack of official cooperation, but
on April 24 Davis announced that the number of traps set for cats
would be expanded from 10 to 50, and that no cats would be shot
before June. The cats are blamed by University of Cape Town avian
demographer Les Underhill for killing all but three of the fledgling
population of about 60 endangered African black oystercatchers during
the past breeding season. Allan Perrins, chief executive officer of
Cape of Good Hope branch of the South African National SPCA,
suggested that the actual culprits might have been some of the feral
rabbits on the island, who might have turned carnivorous and become
nest predators. Seals are also blamed by some observers. Seals have
been kept from re-establishing haulouts on Robben Island in recent
years to protect seabird colonies, but on April 21, 2006 “Both
Robben Island and the department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
agreed to allow the return of Cape fur seals,” e-mailed Seal
Alert/South Africa founder Francois Hugo. Robben Island, designated
a World Heritage site by the United Nations Environmental Program,
provides habitat to 132 bird species in all.

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Kindness Clubs grew into the Ghana SPCA

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

Kindness Clubs grew into the Ghana SPCA
by Debra J. White

Scraggly dogs and hungry cats foraging on the crowded streets
of Kumasi tugged at schoolteacher Roland Azantilow’s heart. Besides
his love for children, including his own three, Azantilow was
always fondness of animals. Indifference to animal mistreatment
troubled him. There were no private or public agencies that helped
animals in distress.
Born and raised in Ghana, Azanti-low was educated at the
Technical Teachers Training Institute, Madras Southern Region, in
Chennai, India. Chennai is headquarters of the Animal Welfare Board
of India, and of the Blue Cross of India, one of the most
influential humane societies in Asia, but “I never had any contact
with anybody in animal welfare,” Azantilow recalls. He did,
however, take a course about animal welfare.

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From Youth for Conservation to the Africa Network for Animal Welfare

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

U.S. and European conservationists long ago narrowed their
goals to preserving an abundance of wildlife, whether to hunt,
watch, or to maintain biodiversity by preventing the extinction of
endangered species.
Youth for Conservation founder Josphat Ngonyo, of Kenya,
initially accepted a conventional American or European
perspective–but the more Ngonyo learned about animals and about the
feelings of fellow Africans, the more his outlook shifted. First he
began trying to become a vegetarian. Then he began to see potential
for providing Africa with a new kind of pro-animal leadership.
Youth for Conservation under Ngonyo received tremendous support from
fellow Kenyans, partly for anti-poaching and trash removal projects
that were and are the focal YfC program, but most enthusiastically
for two departures from mainstream conservation philosophy.

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